Notch the Arrow
by Aiko Isari
Summary: [Post-Rebellion] Someday, things would change. When they did, he would make his move. Or, Homura and Madoka were not the only ones to remember. Slight AU.


**_A/N:_** So... I can't seem to stop writing Tatsuya. Yeah, oops. This is a bit of a darker AU. My friend Sgt Rypht requested it unofficially after imagining Tatsuya shooting an arrow into Homulucifer. So... yeah this happened. This is for the Diversity Challenge, prompt: B12. Write a piece between 950-999 words. Hope this works for everybody. Please read and review!

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><p>Sometimes, Tatsuya dreams of large, scary storms.<p>

Around him, the walls shake and the windows crack a little and people wail. His mommy and daddy are so close to him that it's kind of hurting and then there's a big noise and-

He wakes up. The dream is similar every time. Everyone is scared, everyone is probably going to cry, but he's not all that afraid because his mama and papa are right there beside him.

_And his big sis is off saving the world, right?_

Madoka never is. He's wondered why to himself before. She's always gone. Sometimes, he thinks she's in the bathroom, but a lot of the time he knows she's not there.

Mama knows too. Even while they're huddled together, she's looking at the windows.

Mama knows in the dream.

But outside of the dream, no one knows anything.

Tatsuya finds that his mouth is not good at forming words every time. Or maybe it is and he's just not saying the right ones.

One time, he dreams and wakes up and it's _different_. There is no older sister helping him walk, or someone tugging at the curtains open to shove the sun's rays into their mother's face. There's no warm room smelling like strawberries and cinnamon and hearing her giggle as she draws picture to put on his wall, just a storage space.

There aren't any pictures on his wall.

Instead, his sister is floating all around the house, sometimes following Mama out the door, sometimes in the garden with Papa. She is dressed in nothing but white, even though when he sees her around the city she is in pink and her dress is a rose from above. She fires pretty pink arrows and the people who are hit by the arrows are so happy. They sleep and go away.

No one ever sees it.

He finds himself sleeping again and it is a nice dream because everyone is around and knows each other. It is definitely a dream, though, because if it were real, people would look sad. No one looks sad here. It's weird.

Even when he falls or stubs his toe, the sadness isn't there for very long. He doesn't like that.

The last dream, he thinks is the scariest.

When he wakes up, though, Madoka is back beside him. She is holding him and blowing bubbles and giggling and something isn't right. Her eyes still look a little unfocused, like the last dream. She doesn't say anything about it, never does.

She's forgotten something. She's forgotten the sky.

And as Tatsuya gets older and older, he realizes that's not a good thing. No, it's horrible.

As he gets older, his sister teaches him how to notch an arrow. He doesn't know what good it will do, but he dreams of her bow and arrow and thinks that maybe he will do that someday, make people smile even though they are being hit with pretty pink arrows.

Maybe his sister is some incredible cupid.

Or was.

She still should be, his heart says so.

All his head sees is her in high school, in college, and a dark-haired girl by her side.

Tatsuya thinks he knows her. Always in the dreams somehow, close to Madoka. Always watching. Sometimes she looks very happy. Sometimes she looks rather scary.

He wants to think that because his sister doesn't notice, it's not a bad thing, but he's not sure anymore. Not when that earring sparkles where there's no light and Sayaka pulls him away every time she's nearby.

Maybe she was a good person once. Tatsuya's not sure if that's how it is now.

Before Madoka goes to college, she buys him a child's archery set. "You'll impress your friends," she jokes, even though he is only seven and can barely hold the arrow, let alone fire it. He still smiles because it's her precious gift.

He practices daily, until he's the same age as his sister when he saw her firing the arrows. It's harder to remember now, all of those dreams, and he would wonder if they were just dreams until he sees the hidden color in his sister's eyes whenever she comes home. The dark girl follows her everywhere, like Madoka is the light to her shadow. Now Tatsuya is old enough to be scared of it himself.

He is also old enough to be _mad._

It's her fault. The dreams are her fault. The things that happened to his big sister are _all her fault._

But she's an adult, and he can't hurt adults because he's still just a kid. He can't go up to her in public and make her say sorry to Madoka for making her hurt and change and go away and come back when that's all he really wants to do.

He's never felt so mad at _anyone_ before.

He takes it out on the archery grounds. He stops missing the target.

Madoka doesn't know he hates her best friend. The best friend -Homura, he reminds himself- doesn't really care. She always smiles at him. She's won, he bets that's what she's thinking. She's won, she has Madoka.

But how can you _have_ anyone?

He studies and smiles back so she is sure that nothing is wrong. He will become a lawyer or something. Something that can convict Homura for being bad when she is supposed to be _good._

Something that will make her help his sister instead of hurt her, like she used to do.

He doesn't know what that something is, at least, not until there is a strange rabbit by his window.

It stares, eyes more red than black, and its body shakes and he thinks it's dying, little by little.

_Make a wish._

That's all it says before tottering away and he doesn't see it again.

But he thinks he doesn't have to.

All it told Tatsuya was to make a wish.

He thinks he can do that.


End file.
